1. Field of the Technology
The present application relates to provisioning extended service set identifiers (ESSIDs) of mobile communication devices which operate in wireless local area networks (WLANs).
2. Description of the Related Art
In wireless communication networks, such as wireless local area networks (WLANs) which operate in accordance with 802.11-based standards, one or more network identifiers may be utilized by mobile communication devices to identify the appropriate WLAN to connect with and obtain services. One of these services may be a voice telephony service, such as the voice telephony service based on Voice over IP (VoIP) communications via the WLAN. For 802.11-based WLANs, the network identifiers are called extended service set identifiers (ESSIDs).
After a mobile device is manufactured and sold, the ESSID of the WLAN for the mobile device needs to be programmed or saved in memory of the mobile device. This type of programming is typically referred to as provisioning. Typically, the ESSID is entered in by the end user through a keyboard of the mobile device. It is desirable, however, to minimize data entry steps for provisioning a mobile device. It would be desirable to have the WLAN itself provision the mobile device with the ESSID, but the mobile device needs the ESSID of the WLAN in order to initially connect with its WLAN.